


Inside

by Elldritch



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Fisting, HEART CRIMES, Happy Ending, It gets sad before it gets horny, Porn with Feelings, Possessive!Harrow, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Restraints, Sex as Therapy, Telepathy, breath play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:06:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26820355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elldritch/pseuds/Elldritch
Summary: Gideon encourages Harrow to get more experimental in bed, and they accidentally end up working through a lot of feelings.For the Kinktober prompt 'Fisting'
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 9
Kudos: 116
Collections: Kinktober 2020





	Inside

“So, um… is there anything else you want?” Gideon asked the dark-haired necromancer curled up in her arms, their mingled sweat and other fluids still drying on their skin. Harrow was breathing deeply and slowly - Harrow wrung out and limp with afterglow was the closest that Gideon ever saw her to being truly relaxed.

“Was that not good for you?” Harrow tensed, and Gideon mentally kicked herself. Harrow could be so insecure at times, so unwilling to believe that Gideon didn’t just love her, but also seriously lusted after her. 

“Fuck, Harrow, don’t be stupid. That was  _ amazing.  _ Like, definitely up there in my top ten orgasms of all time. It really isn't that I’m not having fun, I’ve just been feeling like you’re holding back? Maybe I just have a hard time believing that twisted, devious Harrowhark Nonagesimus is one hundred percent vanilla in the bedroom, you know?”

“I thought that this was what you wanted.”

“It is! If you wanted to just keep on doing this forever I would be totally up for that; don’t get me wrong. I’m never going to get tired of you fucking me. But - I know it’s hard to believe - but I’m not exactly experienced at this stuff…”

“Neither am I!”

“So I don’t really know what I like, and what I don’t yet. I’d be open for some… experimentation. If you wanted to. Experiment, I mean. Fuck. Ignore me, I’m being stupid.” Gideon blushed, wishing she hadn't said anything. 

“Griddle…  _ Gideon _ … I will never ignore you. I never  _ could _ ignore you; the very most I could ever manage was to pretend. Even before I absorbed your soul, you were a permanent presence in my mind, and now that you’re back in your own body, you don’t take up any less of my attention.” Harrow pushed herself up on her elbows, so that she could look Gideon in the eyes. “There isn’t a single moment where I’m not thinking of you.”

The intensity of Harrow’s gaze was irresistible, and Gideon couldn’t help herself. She pulled Harrow in for a kiss, wondering, as Harrow’s tongue parted her lips, whether perhaps her fatigued muscles might have recovered enough for a round two…

When Harrow pulled away they were both flushed and breathing heavily, and Gideon was acutely aware of every place their bodies touched. 

“Did you mean it?” Harrow asked, voice barely more than a whisper. “That you’d be open to… experimentation?”

“Fuck yes,” Gideon said, with feeling. She couldn’t imagine a single thing Harrow could want to do that wouldn’t be completely erotic, simply by virtue of it being  _ Harrow _ . “What did you want?”

“I want _everything_.”

Harrow’s limbs had apparently entirely thrown off their post-coital lassitude. In one swift movement, Harrow was sat astride Gideon, knees bracketing her hips. She took Gideon’s wrists in her hands, pinning her to the bed, and Gideon knew that she could easily have thrown Harrow off, but couldn’t think of a single reason why she’d want to. 

“Do you trust me?” Harrow asked, and Gideon couldn’t find her voice, so she simply nodded. 

Without warning something - a rope of tendon from the feel of it - wrapped around first one of Gideon’s ankles, then the other. She jerked in shock, but didn’t resist as her legs were tugged open until they were spread as wide as they could comfortably go - effectively rendering them immobile. 

Harrow released her grip on Gideon’s arms, but before Gideon could move, her arms were bound as well, and in moments she was utterly helpless, limbs spread to their furthest extent, and Gideon was captivated by the naked hunger in Harrow’s eyes as she surveyed her handiwork. 

“I want you to be  _ mine _ ; I want to possess every single piece of you. I want to consume you as completely as you have consumed me.”

“Harrow,” Gideon couldn’t help saying, “I  _ am _ yours. You know I am.”

“You aren’t, yet. But you will be.”

Harrow kissed her, then, forestalling any response Gideon might have made. 

“If you were truly mine,” Harrow whispered through their joined lips, “then you never would have left me.”

“Harrow, I didn’t…”

“Shh…” Harrow commanded, and she sat upright once more, bringing both hands to wrap around Gideon’s throat, applying just the slightest hint of pressure. “Your voice is mine now; you don’t use it unless I say.”

Gideon closed her mouth, staring into Harrow’s eyes. The look Harrow gave her was just as hot with need, just as full of lust, as it had been moments earlier, but now those eyes were also brimming with tears, and when Harrow spoke again her voice was harsh with emotion.

“Every word you speak belongs to me, Gideon. You don’t get to say goodbye to me, ever again. Not ever. You’re mine. You understand?”

Gideon was shocked to find that she was just as choked with unshed tears; when she forced her words past the lump in her throat, they came out hoarse. “Yes... Harrow, yes.”

Harrow’s hands tightened on her throat, thumbs pressing into her windpipe until Gideon struggled to breathe; just as she felt herself starting to panic, the hands slackened, resting gently around her neck.

“Your breath is my breath now; you will keep breathing and you will not stop. You will do whatever it takes to keep breathing, because I will not permit any alternative.” A single tear ran down Harrow’s cheek. She didn’t seem to notice, but Gideon couldn’t look away from it; she followed the wet trail it left with her eyes as the solitary droplet crested Harrow’s jaw and continued on, down her neck, finally coming to rest in the hollow of her throat. Gideon saw that Harrow’s chest heaved desperately, taking in frantic lungfuls of air. 

This wasn’t Harrow’s first panic attack. The strangest things would affect her; the scent of blood, sunlight reflecting off the edge of a blade. Even once, the sight of Gideon motionless in sleep, lying on her back, arms outstretched at just the angle they’d been in when she died. Something would remind Harrow, and she’d go away to that place in her mind where Gideon was still dead, and Harrow relieved her death on endless loop, and Gideon would have to hold her close and coax her back to the present. 

This  _ was _ the first time that Gideon had been helpless during one of Harrow’s flashbacks - she couldn’t hold her, couldn’t take Harrow’s hands in hers to stop her from injuring herself, couldn’t press her lips to Harrow’s ear and whisper to her that everything was okay now and she was alive. But when she looked back to Harrow’s face, there was none of the blankness she expected to see. Harrow was still here, still present. Somehow, for the first time, she was remembering Gideon’s death without reliving it.

Harrow placed her hands, one over the other, in the valley between Gideon’s breasts, and Gideon knew that she must be able to feel the thundering of Gideon’s heart as it raced with confusion and adrenaline, unsure whether she was horny, or grief-stricken, or paralysed with worry for her necromancer. Maybe all three. Harrow’s palm perfectly covered the starburst of knotted scar tissue where the iron railing had entered her.

“This is my heart.” Harrow said, “my heart beats in your chest, and yours in mine.” She raised one hand, placed it on her own chest. “I need you to keep my heart safe; I can’t lose it again.” Harrow’s voice broke on the last word, and she was sobbing in earnest now. Gideon ached to wrap her arms around her necromancer's shoulders until the tremors stilled, but Harrow didn’t release her bonds. She was about to ask Harrow to let her go, but then Harrow took one more deep, shuddering breath, and she was still; back under control.

Gideon understood then - all of this was about control. It wasn’t Harrow’s grief which woke her screaming in the night. It wasn’t loss which pulled her back through time, again, and again, turning that single moment into a gravity well she couldn’t escape from. It was helplessness. It was the irony that, in trying to give Harrow limitless power, Gideon had taken away her choice. In trying to save her, Gideon had broken her. 

And with that understanding came the realisation that this was something Gideon couldn’t fix. Harrow needed to put  _ herself _ back together, she had to find her own way back to solid ground; all Gideon could do was give her the space and the support and the love to keep her safe until she had made herself whole again.

As Harrow regained her composure, something new came into her eyes; something calculating, analytical, and wicked. She cupped Gideon's face with one hand, pressed her thumb to Gideon’s lips until she parted them, and then slipped it inside, a slow, deliberate penetration. Gideon could still taste herself on Harrow, from when they’d fucked earlier, and all of her coursing hormones and rigid, directionless tension fell into place, found their purpose; not fight, or flight, but  _ fuck. _

She worked her throat, sucking, massaging the pad of Harrow’s thumb with her tongue. Her limbs were taut - she was all but immobile, but found enough give in her bonds to allow her to buck her hips, to arch her back; her body twisting itself into the purest expression of arousal and devotion, a wordless plea.

Harrow took her hand away from Gideon’s face, but Gideon was only bereft for a moment before Harrow’s teeth were on her neck. Gideon could feel her skin becoming tender as Harrow alternated between sucking and biting at the delicate flesh, and understood that Harrow was deliberately marking her. 

_ Fuck, that’s hot. _

“You’re  _ mine, _ ” Harrow growled, transferring her attention to Gideon’s breasts; Gideon looked down and was transfixed at the sight of her skin between Harrow’s teeth. Harrow looked almost feral, lips drawn back, eyes closed in an ecstasy of lust that was possessive, hungry, all-consuming. When Harrow’s mouth moved lower, covering one of Gideon’s nipples, Gideon found herself shuddering uncontrollably with need, and just the faintest frisson of fear, but she needn’t have worried. In deference to Gideon’s sensitivity, Harrow used only tongue and lips on first one nipple, and then the other. 

Gideon realised she was making noises, a low, desperate keening that she thought vaguely ought to feel shameful, but Gideon could find no trace of shame in her soul. She  _ was  _ Harrow’s, and she could deny her necromancer no part of herself; not her mind, nor her body, nor her heart. Not even the quivering animal core of her which comprised of nothing but raw, insatiable hunger.

Harrow kissed her again, and the sweetness of it was almost painful. Gideon tasted tears on Harrow’s lips and lapped at her until no trace of salt remained, as if she could erase Harrow’s sadness along with her tears. 

“You are so beautiful, Gideon.” Harrow said, sitting back on her heels, caressing the length of Gideon’s body with both her hands and her gaze. “You are everything to me. I feel like the only time I’m truly alive is when I’m inside you. I want to claw my way into you and never come back out.” Harrow sighed, a breath of mingled longing and regret. “There is no amount of closeness that will satisfy me; however much of you I have, I will always want more. You are an addiction, Gideon Nav, a compulsion, and I never want to be free of you.”

Gideon couldn’t speak. She felt as though Harrow’s words touched her soul the same way her hands touched Gideon’s body. A chasm opened inside of her, a deep void that Gideon had never acknowledged before but couldn’t avoid now. She’d spent a lifetime papering over the cracks in her broken spirit, the wounds that came from never being enough, never once being told that she was good, never feeling loved or appreciated or wanted. Harrow’s words sank into her, and for the first time Gideon couldn’t deflect it. Those scant few times that Harrow had praised her before flashed into her mind;

_...For the love of the Emperor, Griddle, you are something else with that sword… _

_ …Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House, you are the finest cavalier we have ever produced... _

_...You are my only friend. I am undone without you… _

Gideon had always deflected her words before, just as earth which has been parched too long cannot absorb a rainfall. She had run away from something she needed too badly to allow herself to have, afraid that she would crumble with wanting it.

Now she couldn't get away. She was pinned in place, not just by the bonds around her arms and legs, but by the weight of a love she could no longer deny. Harrow loved her. Harrow found her  _ worth  _ loving. 

“Tell me again,” she found herself begging, without consciously deciding to speak. “Tell me I’m beautiful.”

“Beloved, you are a perfection so exquisite as to beggar belief. The only way I can be certain that you aren’t a dream is because I know that my mind could never create a beauty like yours. Your strength… your grace… your gentleness… you take my breath away.”

It was Gideon’s turn to cry then, and Harrow leaned forward, cupping Gideon’s face and brushing away her tears with trembling thumbs. With a reverence which devastated Gideon as even a mortal blow to the chest had not, Harrow kept talking. 

“I cannot conceive of the kind of spirit which could live the life you’ve lived, with all its deprivation, all its cruelty, and never once become cold or uncaring. There’s a kindness within you that is like a miracle to me; it endures in even the darkest of moments.”

Perhaps Harrow could see that Gideon was at her limit, on the very brink of unravelling utterly, shattering beyond all hope of recovery. It was with the utmost tenderness that Harrow grinned, the most carefree expression Gideon had ever seen on her face, and said “and your biceps are  _ to die _ for.”

It was what Gideon had needed, the catalyst to that impossible alchemical process which transformed tears to laughter. Harrow’s words were a bridge back to herself, and Gideon took it gratefully.

“Harrow?” she asked, when she could speak again.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know if you’d noticed… but you’ve tied me up, naked, in your bed. Are you going to do something about that, or what?”

“You want me to let you go?”

“ _ Hell _ no.” Gideon flashed Harrow the most seductive expression she could muster, “I want you to take advantage of me.”

Harrow spent a moment in contemplation, and Gideon found herself scrutinised in a way that was deeply intimate.

“You know… there was something I’ve been wanting to do to you…”

“Does it involve sex? Because if so, I’m down for it. You have no idea how fucking horny I am right now.”

“I think I might have some idea…” Harrow moved, climbing off Gideon’s hips and settling down on the bed between her legs. Gideon could feel the slickness left behind where Harrow’s cunt had been. “Would you let me… fist you? I  _ need _ to be inside you so badly I think I might go mad from it.”

“It’s never bad when you’re inside me,” Gideon quipped, automatically, and then, “ _ hell _ yes. I would fuck a bone right now, I’m so desperate.”

“That’s a terrible idea, Griddle. Bones are very porous, and just covered in fissures and crevasses. Believe me, you’ll enjoy my fingers much more.”

“I always do.”

Harrow ran the very tip of her right index finger down the length of Gideon’s cunt, the touch so light Gideon wouldn’t have been sure it had happened at all, if she hadn’t felt the immediate heat as her blood rushed to her already-swollen labia. She was so aroused it  _ ached.  _

“ _ Please _ ,” she begged. Again, the lightest of touches. Gideon’s hips lifted completely off the bed, seeking greater contact, craving friction.

“I don’t want to hurt you, which means I have to take this slowly.” Gideon whined, a desperate sound, low in her throat. She didn’t want slow. She wanted Harrow’s fist inside her, now. She wanted to break herself open around Harrow’s wrist, she wanted Harrow to fuck her until she bled… Her lust was so intense as to be self-destructive, and she gave into it, knowing that Harrow would never hurt her, or allow her to hurt herself; trusting Harrow to keep her safe as she journeyed through the very darkest of her desires. 

She held Harrow’s gaze as she fought against the bonds which held her fast, trusting her eyes to say what she was too far gone to say with words.  _ Yes…  _ she wanted this,  _ yes…  _ she was okay,  _ yes…  _ she wanted to be here, she struggled not to get away, but to get closer. 

With agonising slowness, Harrow pushed a single finger inside her. It met no resistance; Gideon was so wet, so open, so ready, but Harrow proceeded with as much caution as she had their very first time, as though Gideon was virginal and untouched, not writhing on the bed in a frenzy of wanton abandon. 

With that single, lonely digit, Harrow began to fuck her, and it was too gentle. Gideon clenched in frustration, needing more, hearing her own voice, as if from far away, a formless babble of  _ please,  _ and _ yes,  _ and _ more.  _

When Harrow added a second finger, there was a momentary stretch, a instant of fullness, before Gideon was unsatisfied again, yearning to be pushed further, fucked harder, needing so much more.

Three fingers was as far as they’d gone before, and it felt familiar, felt right, felt like coming home, but Gideon wasn’t craving comfort; in that moment, she yearned for annihilation. As the third finger slid inside her, Harrow started to stroke Gideon’s clit with her other hand, and Gideon instantly clenched with appreciation. 

“Beloved… you have to relax; stop gripping me so tight or I can’t do this.”

It took a herculean effort to relax her muscles against the instinct to bear down and steal whatever sensation she could from Harrow’s interminable, godforsaken patience, but she was rewarded for her struggle when Harrow finally started to work a fourth finger inside her. She felt her whole world dwindle, shrinking down to encompass nothing more than the impossibility of remaining passive and open before the onslaught of Harrow’s fingers. She was lost in the sensation, drowning in a pleasure that was just this side of pain when she felt the whole of Harrow’s hand finally slide into her, the combination of fullness and relief as her knuckles made it past the barrier of Gideon’s pelvis. 

“I need to be inside you,” Harrow breathed, and before Gideon could wonder how exactly Harrow proposed to be  _ more  _ inside her than she already was, she felt the familiar presence in her mind, almost hesitant, like a polite knocking on the borders of her self, and she made her soul as open as her cunt and Harrow was  _ there.  _ She felt Harrow’s own stab of arousal as she took in the sensations Gideon was feeling, and then the last vestiges of separation between them fell away, and Gideon was herself, stretched wide around Harrow’s fist, and she was Harrow, feeling the heat and pressure of Gideon’s cunt as it began to spasm…

When Gideon screamed, she didn’t know if it was with Harrow’s voice or her own, and if there had been a single corner of her mind with room to do anything more than just feel as the waves of her orgasm swept her away, then she might have been glad to be restrained; might have worried that she would snap Harrow’s fragile wrist with the violence of her climax, but there was no space in her for anything but all-consuming pleasure, and Harrow was there with her, experiencing every moment until they formed a perfect whole, a sympathetic resonance amplifying each sensation until it was almost unbearable.

When Gideon returned to herself, she was alone in her mind, but Harrow was wrapped around her, bodies pressed as close as could be humanly managed. She found that her limbs were free, and she took her necromancer in her arms, holding her with muscles that still trembled with exertion.

“I love you,” Gideon said. She’d said it before, a hundred times before Harrow had believed her, a hundred more before Harrow had felt secure enough to say it back. Harrow’s face was buried in Gideon’s chest, and her reply was muffled, but Gideon didn’t need to hear the words to know that Harrow loved her back. She’d seen inside her necromancer’s mind now, felt how her whole self was built around that loving, like iron filings lining up to a magnet, a mirror to Gideon’s own love. 

They fell asleep like that, curled together and sated, content in the knowledge that nothing - not even death - could come between them. 


End file.
